In the fictional Tuscan hilltop village of Santorno, the setting for Amanda Craig’s entertaining and surprisingly bracing new novel, the Three Graces of her title are preparing for a spring wedding. Adorning this idyll – or “Hampstead-by-Tuscany”, as it is christened by a disgruntled member of the younger generation – Craig’s Graces are a trio of elderly expatriates with a total of “four breasts, five eyes and three hip replacements” between them.
Still just about standing after two years of lockdowns, self-satisfied Ruth Viner is a retired psychiatrist, American by birth. Then there is elegant Marta Koning, a concert pianist and twice an émigré, born in Berlin to communist parents before marrying into the English aristocracy and then in widowhood opting for la dolce vita. Ruth’s erstwhile neighbour in London, Marta is the wealthiest of the Graces, living happily off the considerable proceeds of the sale of her Hampstead home. Marta’s sister-in-law Diana completes the set: a veteran of 1960s Zimbabwe (which she still thinks of as Rhodesia), mourning her childhood country pile in England and “living on the cusp between poverty and parsimony”.
So far, so many citizens of nowhere – and that’s before the next generation begin arriving for the wedding. The happy couple are Ruth’s grandson, Brexiter City boy Olly, and his bride-to‑be Tania, an Instagram influencer whose career took off in lockdown with her trademark Botticelli looks. Marta’s Black grandson Xan, born to a classic blended family, is balancing love for his grandmother against millennial resentments about house prices and job opportunities, not to mention his experience of racism. Already in residence are the enigmatic Raff, handsome volunteer labourer on Ruth’s organic farm, and the fabulously wealthy and not-a-little-sinister Russian neighbour Ivanov, who goes nowhere without a phalanx of bodyguards.
And there are, of course, also one or two local people, whose insights and significance are consistently underestimated by the incomers. Fortysomething Enzo, Ivanov’s tenant, is Santorno born and bred and an invaluable factotum to Ruth. Umbrian Stefano, a courier, is considered by Enzo as much of an outsider as Ivanov; his beautiful sister Giusy, referred to as Juicy by the Graces, works as a cook but also has a degree in biology.
Naturally enough, there’s trouble in paradise: at the novel’s centre is an unsparing examination of ageing, and how three very different characters deal with the indignities, injustices and punishments of old age, as well as the struggle to hold fast to its rewards. Ruth feels ever more resentful of the burden of her grandson’s wedding, and is beginning to realise she may not be the benignly wise woman she has always thought herself. Marta is increasingly in too much pain to perform the music she loves and made uneasy by generational conflict. Diana is struggling with poverty, a lost son and her ineradicable love for an abusive and demented husband. When Enzo, bitterly estranged from his American wife and daughter and nursing a grudge against migrants, hears strange noises one night and picks up his gun, trouble begins to look more like tragedy.
If all this sounds like a lot – it is. Crammed with Shakespearean errors and coincidences, mistaken identities and lost children, with characters and subplots coming thick and fast, The Three Graces also tilts at prejudices and preconceptions left, right and centre. Just when we want to shriek “stop calling her Juicy” at Giuseppina’s employers, another character does it for us; our assumptions as to the bona fides of the unexpected Black wedding guest Blessing are toyed with to just short of breaking point. Although the novel’s sensibility feels decidedly haut-bourgeois – references to Trollope and Robert Graves, Marta’s heartfelt paean to “Satie’s Gymnopédies, his acrobats swinging gracefully, defiantly over the void of oblivion” – Craig is too clever a storyteller to allow herself to be skewered as neatly as her characters are. As a result, as the author throws herself with fearless energy into arguments on everything from autism to cancel culture to immigration to the property market, we are compelled to pay attention (and sometimes to check our own privilege).
Our sympathies, too, are steered in unexpected directions: the misery of Diana, the unreconstructed old colonial, is properly poignant, while Tania the airheaded Instagram queen offers a pretty convincing portrait of traumatised numbness. The Three Graces may occasionally teeter on the brink of riotous but it is also witty, sharp-eyed and, in the end, ridiculously enjoyable.
• The Three Graces is published by Abacus (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
